


A Special Night

by Chericola



Series: A Return to Normalcy [2]
Category: Charlie Bone Universe - Jenny Nimmo
Genre: F/M, exploration of trauma, set between books 5 and 6
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2019-07-05 20:34:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15871260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chericola/pseuds/Chericola
Summary: Amy and Lyell share a night alone together, during which some truths are shared and hearts are cleansed.





	A Special Night

That night, they dined alone. Conveniently, Charlie was sleeping over at Benjamin’s for the night, and Paton and Maisie were staying the night at Ingledew’s Bookshop. Amy suspected that it had been arranged deliberately so that she and Lyell could be alone.

They sat opposite each other, and in complete silence. Gone was the small-talk they’d so excelled at over the past few days. Amy didn’t have the heart anymore to continue it, and it would have been pointless anyway. Such small-talk was only a way of avoiding the heart-to-heart conversations they most needed to have. They had to move past that, somehow, if they ever wanted to return their relationship to something like it was before. Try as she might, Amy wasn’t sure how to start.

She couldn’t bring herself to begin the conversation. She was afraid, she knew, but why? This should be so easy, so natural. They’d been so close, before, had shared almost everything with each other. How could this be any different?

Somehow, it was.

It had been ten years. Ten years of separation and loneliness for both of them. They were both older, both different people than they had been when they’d parted so long ago. Lyell was no longer the carefree, laughing pianist he’d once been. She didn’t truly know who Lyell was now, nor did he know what she might have become after ten years living with Grandma Bone. And she wasn’t sure that she wanted to know what had happened to him during those ten years. 

They finished their meal without speaking even once. Finally, Amy gathered up the courage to say something.

‘Lyell?’

He glanced at her.

‘Are you… afraid?’

He nodded. ‘You don’t know who I’ve become.’ For that matter, he didn’t know who he’d become. How could he tell her? And how could she understand if he did when he barely understood it himself? Would she feel differently about him if she knew? 

‘I don’t want you to think differently of me,’ he said. ‘If I tell you, you might.’ 

‘Lyell, I just want to be there for you,’ Amy said, touching his hand. ‘Let me.’

Lyell opened his mouth as if to say something, but quickly closed it again. There was nothing to say. Instead, he took her hand and let her lead him upstairs. 

oOoOo

In the bathroom, they stripped. As they did, Amy watched Lyell. He was thinner than she remembered; so was she. His face had an indoor pallor, as if he had not spent enough time outdoors, and there were dark smudges beneath his eyes. For all of that, he was still beautiful to her. But then, how could he not be?

Lyell was looking intently at her, waiting for her to speak. She swallowed hard. ‘You’re still you. You’ve… changed, but I still know you. I’d know you anywhere.’

He looked away, but not before she saw the glimmer of emotion in his eyes.

‘I know you, too,’ he said quietly. ‘I don’t remember everything, but I know.’

He stepped into the bathtub and settled into the warm water, careful not to slosh too much. Amy followed him, and he couldn’t help staring at her naked body as she settled into the water opposite him. She was still beautiful, even if she didn’t think so. 

She was trembling; so was he. Carefully, not wanting to alarm her, he cupped her hip, felt the roundness of it beneath his fingers. It felt familiar, somehow, as if he’d done it many times before. He probably had. Tentatively, he reached to stroke her cheek and saw Amy shiver. 

There was a compassion in her gaze that brought tears to his eyes, and he blinked rapidly to dispel them. It had been an achingly long time. Too much had been forgotten that he wasn’t sure he would ever get back. He could only hope that he could salvage whatever he could.

The past at once seemed far away and so close that he could almost touch it; he wasn’t sure if he even wanted to. He did touch Amy. Her body felt real underneath his fingertips—she felt real. Real and alive. Just like him.

He didn’t realise that he was crying until he felt Amy’s fingers brushing the wetness from his cheeks.

‘Amy,’ he began. He wasn’t sure what else to say—I’m sorry? I love you? —so he said nothing more. He didn’t need to. Amy understood, even after all these years. She understood, because she felt the same way and because she knew him, on a deeper, almost instinctual level. And he knew her in the same way.

‘Oh Lyell, I know,’ she said softly. And he saw that her own eyes were brimming with tears. It almost undid something within him to see it, and hear the tenderness in her voice.

‘Will you let me wash you? Please?’ She held up a sponge, which she had taken from the sink.

Hoping that his eyes didn’t reveal the myriad of emotions that were coursing through him, he silently nodded.

He’d forgotten what it was like to be loved by someone. Amy made him remember, with every brush of the sponge against his skin. He marvelled at the gentleness and love in her every movement. Even after ten years her love for him was as strong as ever. Tears ran freely from his eyes at the thought, and he felt Amy wipe them away.

It was then that he began to cry in earnest. He had not felt this much love in over ten years, and it undid him completely. He felt himself shake, felt the emotions burn deep inside of him. He cried, for the years they’d lost and would never have back; for the two people they’d never be again. For the loss, the loneliness they’d had to endure. All those emotions that he should have felt during those ten years of silence seemed to surge inside of him like a torrent, threatening to overcome him, and he shook and cried.

Suddenly he felt Amy’s arms come around him as if she would never let him go again. Her cheeks were wet with tears. Her body, he found as she leaned against him, was also trembling. Slowly he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her closer to him, so close that he could feel her every ragged breath as if they were his own.

‘Oh, Lyell.’ Her voice broke as she added, ‘I love you.’

He couldn’t return her words—not yet. Instead he said, ‘I missed you. I’m sorry.’

‘I know,’ she whispered. ‘Lyell, it’s all right. Nothing will change the way I feel about you. We’re safe, you’re safe here.’ 

That set off another torrent in him, and she held him as he sobbed and waited for him to calm down again.

‘I’m sorry,’ he began again, but she shook her head. There was no need to apologize for anything. 

‘Let…let me wash you, now,’ Lyell said quietly, picking up the sponge from where it was pressed against the side of the tub and Amy’s leg. ‘You need it.’

She nodded mutely. Lyell dipped the sponge into the water and began to wet her golden-brown strands of hair.

‘You’re beautiful,’ he said. ‘But then you always were.’

Amy gave a half-laugh, half-sob. ‘So are you.’

‘Me? I don’t think so.’ It was meant to be joking, but it came out shy and serious.

‘You are to me,’ Amy said. 

He wanted to believe her, but couldn’t. He saw the truth every time he looked in a mirror. His pallor was terrible—almost sickly—and there were dark shadows under his eyes and small scars on some parts of his body. And yet Amy was gazing at him with shining eyes, as if she couldn’t see any of those things. 

‘It doesn’t matter to you?’

‘No,’ she said gently. ‘It doesn’t.’ Then, hesitantly: ‘Do you care if I look different than before?’

‘No,’ he said immediately. ‘Never.’ 

She smiled sadly at him. ‘Does that answer your question?’

He nodded.

He continued washing her hair and skin, putting as much love in it as he could muster. He felt Amy relax against him and was glad that he could give her that. 

After a while she stirred and took his hand. He silently followed her lead as she climbed out of the bathtub and wrapped herself in a fluffy pink towel. For a few moments they stood together. 

‘Will you tell me about your life in Bloor’s Academy?’ Amy asked quietly.

He looked away. ‘There’s not much to tell. Most of it is hazy.’

‘I know,’ she whispered. ‘But I want to know who you are now, Lyell. I want to understand.’

He was silent for a moment. ‘Will you tell me about your life here, under my mother’s thumb?’ Such a life with his mother involved was bound to have been unpleasant. ‘And… Charlie?’ He couldn’t help the wistful note that entered his voice then. He barely knew his son—his disappearance had meant that he never got to see him grow up. He would have been lying to himself if he claimed that there wasn’t a part of him that was hurt at that fact.

‘I’ll try,’ Amy said gently. ‘I have told you something about Charlie, though.’

‘But I want to know what you felt and thought. When he started going to school, what was it like? What was it like when he developed his endowment?’ Tears glinted in his eyes; it made her heart ache to see it. ‘I need to know. What was his childhood like?’

There was an almost desperate look in his eyes now. Amy touched his cheek, her heart aching even more. So much time had been lost… years that they would never have back. Because of the Bloors’ cruel actions, Lyell had missed out on the precious years of their son’s childhood. It had to be very painful to know just how much he had missed out on while he was spellbound and trapped in Bloor’s Academy.

‘I want to understand, too,’ he said. ‘I want to understand who you’ve become. I want to understand what your life was like when I was… gone.’

‘I will tell you,’ she promised. ‘I’ll tell you everything I went through during the past ten years. But not yet.’

‘No?’ A glimmer of the old humour surfaced in his eyes. Her heart cheered to see it.

‘No,’ she murmured. ‘First, let’s go to bed.’

He nodded acquiescence, and she took his hand and led him back to their bedroom. 

oOoOo

They crawled into bed together, into each other’s arms. And so he told her. Not everything, but the things he could bear to tell. He told her about his life in Bloor’s Academy—at least what little he could remember of it. He spoke of the confusion and the isolation. The feeling that something was wrong with him. The hollowness he’d felt most of the time, and the sense of clarity and longing he always felt whenever he heard the cathedral bells.

He also found himself speaking a little of what it was like being trapped and under the thumb of the Bloors. How he’d feared Manfred—still feared him– and his hypnotic power. How lost and helpless he’d felt. Amy didn’t say anything—just listened with all the kindness of her heart to everything he had to say. Every feeling that he remembered, he told her about. Every action, every moment. When he was done his face was wet with his tears.

‘I’m sorry,’ Amy whispered. Tears stood in her own eyes.

‘I know,’ he said quietly. ‘Tell me about you? Please?’ 

And so Amy told him about the ten years she had spent without him, at the mercy of the Yewbeams. She told him about her dreary life in Number 9 with Maisie, Paton, Charlie and Grandma Bone. How badly Grandma Bone (and her sisters too) had treated her and Maisie, forcing them to be like servants in their home. The insults and disrespect she’d had to endure from the Yewbeams (sans Paton), just because she was not endowed or a descendant of the Red King like them. Even after Lyell’s death, his family hadn’t thought her good enough for him, hadn’t given her a widow’s respect.

‘I was so grateful at first, because we’d had nowhere to go and no money. They could have tossed us out onto the streets, but they didn’t. I knew they only did it because of Charlie, but I was still grateful. Until the pictures disappeared…’

Her voice trailed away; too overcome to speak, she gazed at him, feeling her eyes sting. Even after ten years, the memory of that moment was raw in her mind. They had not been content with taking her husband from her—they had to destroy every single photo of him, leaving her with nothing but memories to remember him by. It was too cruel.

‘I’m sorry,’ Lyell said quietly. There was a world of regret in his eyes.

‘It wasn’t your fault,’ she told him. ‘None of it. Don’t blame yourself for what happened.’ 

‘How can it not be?’ He looked at her with those bruised dark eyes. ‘I left you.’

‘You didn’t,’ she insisted. He just shook his head and looked away. 

‘I did,’ he said. ‘And I’m so sorry for it. I never wanted you and Charlie to be hurt because of me.’

She knew that she couldn’t persuade him otherwise, so she continued with her retelling.

‘Charlie made it worth it, though,’ Amy said. ‘He’s so like both of us. You most of all, I think. I stayed here because of him. I…’ She told him everything she remembered of Charlie’s childhood, including his first day of kinder and school, his birthdays, the escapades he got into with Benjamin Brown. And the day he discovered him endowment and was sent to Bloor’s, and his adventures there.

When she finished, Lyell kissed her on the cheek. ‘I’m sorry you’ve had to raise him by yourself. But you did a good job.’

‘You saw him at Bloor’s,’ she recalled. ‘Do you remember?’ 

He frowned. ‘Not much. I met him, once or twice. He was familiar, but I could never place him.’ 

‘It was after he came that everything changed,’ he added. ‘My mind was clearer and I didn’t feel so lost. I didn’t know why.’

‘He’s your son,’ Amy said. ‘As well as mine. Maybe that bond helped you.’ 

‘Maybe,’ he agreed. 

He was still frowning. Amy didn’t want him to focus too much on that time (not if it disturbed him) so she changed the subject. 

oOoOo

‘What did you feel, when you first woke up?’

Amy leaned her head against his shoulder and gazed up at him, a slight smile on her face. It made him smile, too, no matter how much he didn’t feel like smiling.

‘Stunned,’ he said. ‘You?’

‘Thankful,’ she said softly. ‘So thankful. You’d come back to me.’

Lyell thought of that time, those strange few moments after he had tasted the King’s tears. At first, he had felt nothing at all, and then… a well of emotion. Shock. Loss. Joy. It was all he could do to cling at Amy, as the emotions that had been only fleeting before swirled in a maelstrom inside of him. 

‘So was I,’ he said quietly. ‘Thankful that of all people, you were there, and Charlie, to take me home. Thankful that you never forgot me, even when I’d forgotten myself.’ 

‘But I did forget,’ Amy said. ‘Hart…’

Sadness had filled her eyes when she spoke those words, and guilt. Because he couldn’t bear to see any more of those emotions on her face right now, he smoothed down the strands of her golden hair and said gently, ‘It doesn’t matter now. None of it does. It’s over. You saved me,’ he added, ‘you and Charlie both, and I will be grateful for it for the rest of my life.’

The tears flowed, then, and he held her as she wept a torrent, her body wracked with muffled sobs.

‘It’s not your fault,’ he said. ‘None of it was. You had no way of knowing what he was. It was only bad luck that you came across him in Kingdom’s, bad luck that he wasn’t the kindly owner you thought he was. You couldn’t have done anything about it, once you saw him. He was too powerful.’

She kept crying and he kept holding her, saying, ‘It wasn’t your fault, Amy. Trust me.’ And somehow, she believed him.

Her sobs abated. Sniffling, she gazed at him, and saw that his eyes were also bright with tears. ‘It wasn’t your fault, either,’ she said.

‘I know,’ he said, his voice cracking. ‘I know. There wasn’t anything anyone could have done. There was nothing I could have done. He was only a child, but he was so powerful. I was helpless against him. I hate that I was so helpless.’

‘We couldn’t help it,’ Amy whispered. She felt her eyes burn, but blinked the moisture away.

‘I’m so sorry that I was gone for so long. I never wanted to leave you.’

‘I know, Lyell,’ Amy said softly. Gently she wiped at a tear that seeped down his cheek. ‘I know. I always knew.’

‘If I could have stayed, I would have. But I couldn’t. I wasn’t strong enough. I thought I would be, but I wasn’t. I was… helpless.’

She could see the helpless anger and remembered fear in his eyes at that knowledge.

‘It’s over now,’ she reminded him. ‘They can’t hurt you anymore.’ 

‘I know.’ He drew in a shuddering breath. ‘I know.’ 

And now it was his turn to cry (again). Amy held him tightly as he buried his head against her chest and wept his heart out.

She murmured inane reassurances to his shaking form, her heart aching terribly at the pain he was in. 

‘I need you. I still need you. I still love you.’ She kissed his cheek and added, ‘I’ll always be there for you, whatever happens. You should know that.’

Again, he felt that sense of awe in his heart. Tears sprang into his eyes. It had been ten years, and she still loved him and was willing to stand by him. It humbled him to no end.

oOoOo

‘We should sleep now, Lyell,’ Amy said softly some time later.

He shook his head. ‘I don’t know if I can. It’s been so long since I last slept properly that I can’t remember how.’

‘Try,’ she said. ‘I’ll help you.’ 

He settled against her, closing his eyes. Not even ten minutes later, his head lolled and his breathing had deepened. Amy smiled slightly. It was good to see him finally getting some of the rest he desperately needed. 

‘Amy?’ Lyell’s slurred voice startled her—she’d thought he was already asleep. ‘I love you.’

‘I love you too,’ she whispered, her heart aching unbearably.

They fell asleep in each other’s arms, more at peace than they’d been for years.


End file.
